Bad News for Pecan Pie
By TERESA BANIK CAPUZZO

If you’re about to bake a pecan pie for Thanksgiving, stop right there. Put that tattered recipe card back in the box and try this one instead: English walnut pie.

This recipe comes from the Wellsboro Steak House, which Chris Coffee and husband, Geoff, have owned and operated on Main Street since June 2005, when they took over from Chris’ parents, Dave and Barb Howey, who ran the landmark restaurant for twenty-six years. Chris has a gift for pie-baking, going three for three for her entries at the Tioga County Fair last August. She took a blue ribbon for every pie she entered in the two-crust pie competition. A blue ribbon for blueberry. A blue ribbon for apple. A blue ribbon for bumbleberry.

If you stop in, you can sample all of the above in season, as Chris makes most all of the pies, shortcakes, and bread puddings that fill the dessert menu. The bumbleberry is her own, but most of the recipes she inherited from Mom, and, at this time of year, one of the menu standards is the English walnut pie. Think of a pecan pie without that killer overdose of sugar, and you have an idea of it: a pie you could eat for breakfast, which is in fact what Geoff does on the rare occasion there’s a slice left over. We’re thinking of it as a great addition to the turkey day feast.

Here’s the recipe Chris bakes for the Steak House:

English Walnut Pie

1 unbaked pie shell
5 eggs, beaten
1 c. sugar
Pinch of salt
1/3 lb. butter
1- 1⁄4 c. dark Karo syrup
1 c. walnuts, roughly chopped

Melt butter and mix well with Karo syrup. In a separate bowl, add beaten eggs to sugar and salt. Mix butter mixture with egg mixture and pour over walnuts in pie shell. Bake at 450 degrees for thirty minutes, then at 400 degrees for about forty minutes.